Workers Under Stress

The Impact of Work Pressure on Group Cohesion

Stuart M. Klein

• Éditeur: The University Press of Kentucky
• Année: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780813182001
• Sujet: Psychologie
• Sous-sujet: Industrie- & Organisationspsychologie

This important book reexamines old assumptions concerning the nature of group cohesion in industrial firms as it is influenced by management actions. Based upon a carefully controlled study, it offers a sound theoretical base and a replicable method, both vital to students of group processes and organizational theorists. The study indicates that high stress was positively related to intragroup conflict regardless of group sanctions encouraging cohesiveness but that when managers rewarded group behavior under high stress a climate was created in which competitive behavior could occur without inducing conflict and nonproductive behavior.

Timely, thoroughly documented, the book extends and integrates prior work in an area vital to managers and theorists alike. Its research design and results should establish the book as the central authority on group cohesiveness in industry.

CHAPTER 1

Work Pressure, Threat, and Group Cohesion: An Exploration of Relationships among Variables

THE PLAN of this chapter is to develop the major relationship between work pressure and group cohesion. The central thesis is that work pressure constitutes a threat to the members of industrial work groups and therefore will affect the degree of group cohesiveness. The explicit variables are work pressure as an independent variable and group cohesiveness as a dependent variable. However, in order to develop pertinent arguments and deduce hypotheses, we will also use an intervening construct labeled threat; we will be arguing that work pressure constitutes a sufficient threat to affect group cohesion and that without this threat the relationship between the independent and dependent variables would be minimal.

This chapter will be organized in three parts: first, the relationship between work pressure and threat for industrial work groups and their members; second, the relationship between threat and group cohesiveness; and finally, the residual relationship that might exist between work pressure and group cohesiveness without the intervening variable of threat. In developing our thesis, studies that both support and contradict the position that threat has an important effect on group cohesive behavior will be analyzed. As the argument progresses, it will become clear that the variables are interactive and not isolated.

A thorough discussion of both the conceptual and the operational definitions of our major variables will appear in Chapter 2. Briefly, for the purposes of clarifying the discussion at hand, work pressure will be considered primarily as externally imposed work demands. Threat will be considered a dangerous situation for the members in a group, involving perceptions of potential bodily harm, disruption of friendship patterns, or attacks upon one’s ego from a system that has legitimate power both to coerce and to reward. Group cohesiveness will be considered the extent to which psychological forces operate to bind people together in a common purpose. This latter definition ignores much of the complexity of the concept of group cohesiveness, which will be dealt with at length in Chapter 2.

Work Pressure and Threat

When people have been subjected to increased work demands that are hard to meet, they will be threatened in at least two ways that are pertinent to the subject of this study. First, they will be threatened with losing some control over their environment since with the advent of the work pressure, the work pace is defined by agents other than the workers themselves. Most important, by definition those under pressure have to work as fast as they can, which implies that they cannot control their pace. The threat of the loss of environmental control should produce anxiety with regard to control needs. Argyris (1957) documents in some detail findings based on similar reasoning. He discusses how organizational goals served by cost reduction programs conflict with the personal goal of “self-actualization” and therefore are threatening to the workers involved.

The second way in which work pressures are threatening is that employees are faced with the loss of rewards (i.e., salary increases, transfers to better jobs) and are subject to punishments (i.e., threats, chastisements, transfers to lesser jobs, and, in some cases, dismissals) if they cannot meet the new work demands. Thus the employee must protect himself from financial loss, status loss, and admonishment from his supervisor that might result from a productivity level below the accepted standard.

Threat and Group Cohesion

Janis (1958) reports a number of studies conducted during the Second World War showing that in times of stress people seem to band together in more integrated groups than under normal conditions. Brophy (1946), focusing specifically on white seamen’s attitudes toward Negro seamen, illustrates roughly the same phenomenon. He found a high correlation between the number of times white seamen shipped with Negro seamen and the degree of favorableness which the white men exhibited toward Negroes. Superficially this was interpreted as a breaking down of previously held attitudes through increasing contacts with the attitude objects. But in further analyzing the results, Brophy found that the degree of change varied from operation to operation within the same ship. For instance, areas relatively isolated from danger produced very little attitudinal change toward Negroes on the part of whites. Most of the changes occurred in operations in which there was a clear danger and survival was partially dependent upon group members cooperating. The social situation in which these men found themselves was a circumscribed one in which new attitudinal norms had to be established in order for them to operate effectively in the face of constant danger. White men who had previously looked upon Negroes unfavorably were forced to depend upon them for survival. This can be interpreted as an increase in group integration, or cohesion, resulting from threat; the change in attitude can be seen as a social by-product.

Further, Grinker and Spiegel (1945) showed the effects on cohesiveness of commonly perceived danger. The members of bomber crews displayed an increasing cohesiveness when they perceived their own safety to depend upon others in the crew. Lanzetta (1955) too showed that there seemed to be an increase in cohesiveness when groups were placed in stressful situations. Leighton (1945), Burnstein and McRae (1962), and Myers (1962) reported essentially the same findings. Finally, Lott and Lott (1965) reported five additional studies which indicate that commonly perceived threat is directly associated with group cohesion.

There is also some evidence that social needs increase under conditions of stress. In the most definitive statement thus far, Schachter (1959) demonstrates that, very generally, there is an increase in affiliative tendencies under threat and anxiety and moreover that anxiety can be reduced by group activity. He suggests that anxiety produces the need for self-evaluation, comparing oneself to others in a similar anxiety situation. This finding was replicated by Weller (1963). Further, Rabbie (1963) gave frightened subjects information concerning the emotional state of others and found that while they did not want to be in the company of others who were more frightened than they, they much preferred the company of others who were just as frightened over those who had little or no fear at all. It appeared that misery liked misery as long as it was not too miserable. Thus there is evidence that work pressure is threatening to employees and serves to evoke certain control, protective, and social needs which may be reduced in the presence of others sharing these needs.

Contradictory Evidence

There is some contradictory evidence, however. For instance, French (1941) created conditions of both threat and frustration in experimentally created groups and ongoing groups. He found that the ongoing groups behaved rather well compared to the newly created groups but that in both cases there was substantial evidence of disintegrative behavior such as bickering, withdrawal, scapegoating, and the like.

Hamblin (1958) investigated the effects of a crisis situation on a group in the absence of a solution to the crisis problem. Twenty-four ad hoc groups experienced the crisis. Four indices of integration—frequency of helping others, self-oriented behavior, frequency of positive and frequency of negative sanctions—showed reliable differences in the behavior of the crisis groups versus that of the control groups. Each of these indices indicated that integration decreased rather than increased as a result of the crisis. People tended to behave in self-oriented ways: they refused to help others and they issued fewer positive and negative sanctions.

Mintz (1951) experimented with a crisis situation that he considered analogous to a theater fire. Subjects were supposed to pull corks from a bottle according to various degrees of rewards and costs and under conditions of individual versus group rewards. His evidence indicates that people react to a crisis situation in a self-protective manner. When they are rewarded for cooperating in terms of both concrete rewards and absence of punishment, they behave in an integrative way. On the other hand, when the possibility of avoiding the threat is coupled with the probability of punishment for those who do not act on the basis of their own self-interests, then there will be group disintegration. In other words, in the face of a threat, if the reward structure is such as to encourage competitive and/or disintegrative behavior, then this is the behavior that will be exhibited.

In Hamblin’s experiment, on the other hand, a cooperative solution to the crisis situation could not have been perceived by members of the experimental group. They were unfamiliar with one another and could not predict one another’s behavior; moreover, they were faced with stimuli situations that could clearly be met at least partially by self-protective behavior, and the further step of cooperating to meet the threat probably would have required a greater period of time. Thus in the Hamblin study a cooperative solution to the crisis was not available and people in the group acted in a more obvious, self-oriented way.

Pepitone and Kleiner (1957) squarely faced the problem of the effects of stress and frustration on cohesiveness. These investigators defined threat as a probability that the group will sustain a loss in status; given degrees of threat were represented by probability statements of given degrees of loss. Frustration was defined as uncertainty about whether a group could gain a status position; given degrees of frustration were represented by probability statements of given degrees of gaining status. Groups were divided into high and low status teams. Half of the high status teams were threatened by telling them that their chances of losing status were good, and half of the low status teams were frustrated by telling them that their chances of gaining status were poor. Cohesiveness was defined in terms of interpersonal attraction among members of a team. Theoretically, degrees of cohesiveness were stated as some function of the actual or potential need satisfaction obtained by the members of the group as the result of their team experience. It was assumed that given expectations of gain and loss, these degrees were equivalents of potential satisfaction of approach and avoidance needs.

Following this reasoning, Pepitone and Kleiner hypothesized that as threat and frustration are reduced, cohesiveness increases. In other words, of the original high status groups, those with high probability of losing status will show low cohesion, whereas those with low probability of losing status will show higher cohesion. Likewise, of the original low status groups, those with high probability of gaining status will show high cohesion, whereas those with low probability of gaining status will show low cohesion.

The results show that low probability of status loss leads to higher cohesion than does high probability of status loss. This finding is consistent with the hypothesizing. However, the groups which were given the threat condition were originally high performing groups, which is implied by the definition of status in this experiment. They were told by the experimenters that they were going to lose their performing powers and thereby lose status. Their ability to do anything about these losses was quite beyond the limitation imposed by the experimental design, much as in Hamblin’s experiment. It was a situation in which any kind of response, group or individual, was useless—a situation not conducive to cohesive behavior. On the other hand, in the high status groups that were to continue in high status, the situation was a completely pleasant one. As a consequence everything associated with the situation (e.g., other group members), with the task itself, with the experimenters, and so on could be expected to acquire secondary reinforcing characteristics. Because of the way this experiment was structured it is not surprising that the results were consistent with the experimenters’ hypothesizing.

Thus the studies that at first glance seem to contradict the empirical investigations reported earlier really do not. In each of the three last-mentioned experiments the experimenters precluded the possibility of successful joint behavior to maintain or to achieve group goals. Presumably a group which discovers that cooperative behavior cannot avert threat or achieve important goals will behave in much the same way as these experimental groups did—namely, show a decrease in cohesiveness. When members of the group cannot see group action, or cohesive behavior, as an effective way of satisfying their needs, or if they perceive that they can better satisfy their needs by individual action, then the degree of cohesion will decrease since cohesive behavior is only one class of behaviors available to them. It is only when the cohesive behaviors are perceived as effective in reducing threat that they will be invoked. Cohesive behavior can be predicted on the basis of its instrumentality in satisfying collective needs.

Work Pressure and Group Cohesion

There is some evidence to suggest that members of cohesive groups can withstand stressful conditions better than members of loosely structured groups (Stouffer et al. 1949; Schein 1956). Seashore (1954) found that cohesive groups felt less work pressure than did noncohesive groups when objective pressure was equal. Buck (1963) found a negative relationship between cohesiveness among first-level supervisors and the amount of pressure that they felt.

Each of these studies used cohesiveness as an independent variable to predict feelings of pressure. None considered the effects of varying amounts of objective pressure on group cohesiveness, but in the light of the evidence that feelings of pressure are in fact affected by cohesiveness, one would suspect that cohesiveness is an adaptive response that tends to reduce feelings of pressure.

Summary

Most of the evidence indicates that a shared threat to members in a group leads to greater cohesiveness. Specifically, if threat-reducing responses are collectively available to group members, work pressure may constitute a threat to the satisfaction of certain needs, and while feelings of work pressure may be negatively associated with the degree of cohesiveness, there is ample evidence that increasing cohesiveness may be an adaptive response to work pressures that reduces feelings of pressure and satisfies certain needs. Since this is a reinforcing condition one would expect the group under pressure to become increasingly cohesive. Thus we find that a two-step process may occur when work pressure is applied in the industrial context. First, anxiety may be aroused with regard to the satisfaction of certain classes of needs; this is considered threatening to the individual. Second, group cohesiveness may be perceived as an instrumental condition which will satisfy these needs and therefore reduce the imposed threat. We will proceed from these assumptions.

CHAPTER 2

Theory and Hypotheses:
An Instrumental Position

SEVERAL AUTHORS consider group behavior as instrumental in achieving individual goals or need satisfaction. For instance, Cartwright and Zander (1968), are instrumentalists who believe that groups can satisfy two classes of needs: when the group itself is the object of the need and when the group is a means of satisfying outside needs.

Bass (1960) considers groups as rewarding collections of people. Two of his major variables are effectiveness (i.e., how rewarding group membership is to individual members of the group) and attraction (i.e., the extent to which the reward for membership is anticipated by individual members). Cohesiveness is a consequent variable that results from the extent to which the member perceives rewards as coming from the group. This is a neat way of stating what the Lotts (1960, 1961, 1965, 1969) call the expectation response: through past rewarding experience in the group a person anticipates satisfaction or dissatisfaction, and this determines the extent to which he is attracted to the group. This position is somewhat different from the instrumental one. Attraction to the group depends upon the amount of reward already achieved in the group (or groups in general) but does not necessarily involve the perception of the group as instrumental in achieving individual goals. However, Bass as well as Cartwright and Zander considers the source of attraction itself to be a rewarding condition of the group.

Homans (1961) thinks of group behavior as a class of variables which is a function of a stimulus-response-reward sequence—basically an instrumental position. The framework is a social situation in which interaction is thought of as individual X’s activity stimulating individual Y’s activity. If individual Y’s activity is rewarded, there will be a greater probability for its occurring again in the presence of similar stimuli; if the activity is negatively reinforced, the probability of its recurring is less. Finally, in keeping with the instrumentalist tradition, there is a point of cessation at which the rewards are no longer worth the cost of performing the activity. At this point Homans invokes the language of economics and talks about profits, or net rewards. Behavior will depend on one’s expectation of total net profit or, in Homans’s terminology, the extent to which rewards and costs are perceived as being distributed judiciously. Thus if individual X and individual Y perceive mutual benefits as the net result of a particular type of interaction, they will behave accordingly. Thibaut and Kelley (1959) use a similar theoretical structure in which interpersonal attraction is a function of rewards received and costs incurred vis-à-vis others.

Thus we have four similar positions, each describing a social behavior in terms of rewards and costs with expectations about outcomes as a central variable. Our conception of the conditions of group cohesiveness will also be based on the expectation of rewards. It should be noted that from a general theoretical point of view, the theory advanced here is quite similar to the expectancy theory advanced by Vroom (1964) and applied specifically to motivation of organizational managers by Porter and Lawler (1968). Basic to this posi...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Work Pressure, Threat, and Group Cohesion: An Exploration of Relationships among Variables
• Chapter 2: Theory and Hypotheses: An Instrumental Position
• Chapter 3: Population Studied and Method Used
• Chapter 4: Analysis of Data and Tests of Hypotheses
• Chapter 5: Further Analysis of the First Study
• Chapter 6: Replication of the First Study
• Chapter 7: Rewards for Cohesive Behavior under High Pressure Conditions
• Chapter 8: Discussion and Summary
• Appendix A: Some Statistical Procedures
• Appendix B: Statistical Details
• Appendix C: Relationships between Work Pressure and Individual Items in the Cohesiveness Index: First Study
• References
• Index